


all we gotta do is be brave and be kind

by beardsley



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:02:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of the world does wonders for Bucky's sex life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all we gotta do is be brave and be kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haipollai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/gifts).



> Happy birthday to Sarah, who is amazing and wonderful and the greatest friend anyone could ask for. ♡ 
> 
> Title from the National.

The end of the world does wonders for Bucky's sex life. He's clutching at straws, at razorblades, but it's better than thinking about the nuclear winter and the endless snow. It's a familiar landscape to Bucky, but he never wanted to see it outside his own head. He clutches at straws; the alternative is to live inside his own head and oh, the monsters inside his head are so much worse than those outside.

Steve wouldn't agree. Steve doesn't have to live with the nightmares.

But — no, that's not true. They all have nightmares, to each according to their needs. They all occupy their own personal hells, haunted by their own personal demons. They are all, for better or worse, microcosms of ruin and death in a macrocosmos of the same.

'You're thinking too loud,' Steve accuses. He's wrapped around Bucky, a wall of solid reliable warmth, chest to back and thigh to thigh. He noses at the soft skin behind Bucky's ear. 'I can hear the cogs turning from here.'

'No, you can't,' says Bucky. He wriggles around until they're face to face. There are dark circles under Steve's eyes. There have been dark circles under Steve's eyes for months now. Bucky traces the line of his jaw with his fingertips, and bites his lower lip when Steve sighs and leans into the touch. 'You're full of shit.'

'Trying to sweet-talk me, I see how it is.'

Yeah. The end of the world does wonders for Bucky's sex life.

~

Four months, three weeks, six days. Hours don't count; it's too difficult to keep track of them, but the sun still sets each day even if it's only a flicker of light on the pallid horizon. The sun paints its edge, separating earth from sky though both are an indistinguishable, overbearing grey. The snow, at first, looks like ashes. They're used to it.

They get used to being the last of the human race: two enhanced, one empath, one completely and utterly normal save for the skill and wits god gave her.

'If you're harbouring some sick little Adam and Eve fantasy,' says Sharon one day when she and Steve try to secure the perimeter around the abandoned (of course; everything is abandoned) warehouse they're using at the moment, 'then boy, have you got another think coming.'

Steve doesn't even understand at first, and then he shudders in disgust as understanding dawns. 'Oh my god, no. Never. Ew. Also, you'd be a horrible mother.'

Sharon punches him in the arm.

They end up sweaty and tangled together on the roof, waiting for their breaths to even out. There is no one around to watch or spy on them, no one to pass judgement, and so they don't have to talk about boundaries and feelings and how it all should work. They are the only ones left around and all they have is each other; all they need is each other, too.

Steve presses a kiss to the top of Sharon's head and she wraps her arms around his waist and they wait for nothing.

~

When the world ends, Sam isn't ready.

No one is, of course, but Sam has lived for years now with a constant background hum inside his own head, of Redwing and of all the birds in New York like white noise in an old radio. It never went away and then he was so used to it, he didn't register it as anything other than normal. The end of the world came like an atomic bomb going off inside his skull, and all the noises — all the hum, every single one of the consciousnesses he treated as if they were part of him too — were gone.

Dead.

Sam spent a solid week screaming his lungs out in childlike terror, desperately alone inside his own head. He remembers through a haze of shock and nausea that Steve and Bucky held him down, held him, kept him warm. He'd have died without them and the three of them would die without Sharon, who kept watch with an arsenal of weapons none of them were surprised to find out she had hidden all over Steve's place.

'Proper preparation prevents poor performance,' Sharon had said. It sounded like she was quoting something she'd heard long ago, the corner of her mouth quirked in a humourless sneer.

Sam is better now. He focusses outwards instead of inwards: on their rations, on securing the places they stay at, on distracting Steve from his guilt and Sharon from her fixation on survival, on making sure Bucky isn't spending too much time in his own company. Their own worst nightmares live inside them, always have, and each other is all they have to ward off the dark when it inevitably comes knocking at the door to claim them.

~

Sam likes to take it slow, Bucky likes to make it a competition and Steve gets off on getting them both off, and between the three of them they can build up momentum for hours at a time when there is nothing better to do and nowhere better to be. There rarely is.

Steve is the only one enhanced enough that he could never get tired. When Sam and Bucky need a break, Bucky wraps himself around Steve's back and reaches around to jerk him off, mouth pressed to Steve's spine, and Steve kneels over Sam to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until he's ready to scream for more. They have all the time in the world. They have nothing _but_ time.

Sharon leaves them to it. She cleans their weapons and restocks their supplies as best as she can, and holds the perimeter with a rifle slung over her shoulder. She can hear them, since there is no point to being quiet. When they're done she joins them, climbing onto sweat-damp sheets between Steve and Sam to get warm from the heat of their skin.

~

They are to each other: an absolution, a second chance, a lifeline, and humanity.


End file.
